1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates in general to new and improved methods of servicing an elevator system, and more specifically to new and improved methods of integrating an expert system having a knowledge base of elevator trouble-shooting information into the working environment.
2. Description of the Prior Art
U.S. Pat. No. 4,649,515, entitled "Methods and Apparatus for System Diagnosis and Control", sets forth an expert system which may be provided with a knowledge base suitable for diagnosing problems in an elevator system.
It would be desirable to be able to use an expert system as an inanimate consultant in the servicing of elevators, because elevator systems are very complex and time consuming to trouble shoot. Elevator service personnel must be given extensive and costly training, and their effectiveness varies with ability and experience. An expert system would provide the equivalent of the most able, most experienced service person as an immediately available consultant, whose expertise would not be lost by retirement. On the contrary, the knowledge base would be constantly improved by taking advantage of the abilities and experiences of a large number of skilled elevator service personnel who, through a knowledge engineer, would add to and/or modify the domain dependent rule base.
For many reasons, it is important that the computer which runs the inference engine of the expert system, and the domain dependent rule base, be located in a centralized location. Security of the system is an important reason. It is also important because the centralized location may be used as a data gathering point for collecting and consolidating all elevator service field data which a knowledge engineer may study and use to add to and modify the rule base, as required, in order to improve the diagnostic ability of the expert system. Also, the centralized rule base would not be susceptible to a number of different people making uncoordinated changes. Further, a change made to a centralized rule base would be immediately available to all field service personnel.
Providing a plurality of expert systems for use by field service personnel would also not be desirable because such individual systems would be costly, bulky, and inconvenient to use, and it would require extensive training of high security personnel.
The problem then is how to efficiently integrate a centralized expert system into the every day working environment of an elevator service technician, which will easily handle: (a) the inexperience of such personnel with expert systems, (b) the mistakes in inputting data required by the expert system in order to select and test the rules of the knowledge base, and (c) the interruptions which will occur in the communication between the field personnel and centralized location of the expert system. Further, the expert system must be easy to use without extensive, special training, so that field service personnel will want to make use of the expert system.